At the groundbreaking LGBT History Month Pre-Launch, held at the Kia Oval Cricket Ground in Kennington in collaboration with Pride Sports, Lynne Featherstone, Minister for Equalities launched a competition to find a logo for sports clubs, fans and players across the country to mark their support for the campaign. The competition is targeted at young people but is open to anyone with creative flair. Entrants have been asked to come up with a design that is embodies the messages as outlined in our Charter for Action and helps spread the message that hate of any kind in sport is not acceptable. The competition will run until 18th January. Rugby Union star, Ben Cohen will then shortlist the top designs from all the entries and then it will then be over to the general public to vote for the winning design on Facebook. For more information about the competition, go here. To see Lynne Featherstone’s speech at the pre-launch, go here
Other exciting events at the Pre-launch, dedicated to sport for the second year running, was an announcement of the Pride House for LGBT Olympians in London, the campaign to bring the Gay Games to London in 2018 and an account of the athletics career of Alan Turing, who will feature largely in next year’s pre-launch, dedicated to his centenary. Attendees were able to take the opportunity to have their photos taken with a board promoting the Justin Campaign to eradicate homophobia in football.
Sarah Williams of the Rugby Football League handed the honour of playing in the tackle Homophobia shirts over from Sheffield Eagles to Leeds Rhinos and gave two of the legendary shirts to the organisers Sue Sanders and Lou Englefield. Tears were jerked when the London gay Men’s Chorus gave a rendition of Make Your Own Kind of Music and The Pink Triangle Theatre gave a agit-prop performance about homophobia.
The English Cricket Board proved to be great hosts and everyone was delighted to see the return of Pink Punters’ Big LGBT bus with its crew in their cricket whites throughout. A full report of the Pre-Launch will be available on this site soon. Here is the programme.